Michael Stanley - Still trying to top himself after all these years.

It's been almost 21 years since Cleveland's Michael Stanley Band broke up, holding attendance records at almost every facility in the area including Blossom Music Center where, in one golden summer in the early '80s, it sold out four shows. Since then Stanley's been alternately praised as one of the city's musical treasures denied his just stardom and reviled as a local has-been whom "no one has ever heard of outside Cleveland." He's even been spoofed in a play called Michael Stanley Superstar by local comedy troupe Last Call Cleveland, which incorporated both concepts.

Yet Michael Stanley, the man at the center of that band and its distinctive voice, just keeps doing what he does, which is make music. It's been a long road. His recording career began in the late '60s with his teen band, the Silk, and kicked off in earnest with a pair of solo albums in 1973 that featured a cast of heavy hitters such as Joe Walsh, Dan Fogelberg, Todd Rundgren and Rick Derringer. The Michael Stanley Band, which had a 13-year run from 1974 to 1986, released 11 albums and toured extensively, building cadres of fans around the country, though nowhere the size of its following here in Cleveland.

Now, at 59, Stanley still has passion and a strong creative spark. In the last four years, he's released four albums, including three albums of new original material and last year's covers album, The Farrago Sessions.

Now, just two years after the release of 2005's American Road, he's put out his 22nd album overall, The Soft Addictions, a 13-track effort that could stand as evidence for both fans and naysayers. It's classic Stanley, a blend of grinding bluesy rockers with a party feel like "The Curves of Bratenahl," "Cadillac Man" and "Drinkin' in the Driveway," funk-fueled tunes like "Matador Love" and Beneath the Radar," and panoramic ballads like "My Side of the Moment," "When It's Time to Dance Alone" and "No Rules When You Dream" that ache with the same heartbreak yearning as his classic shoulda-been-a-hit "Lover" from 1980's Heartland, only with an older-and-wiser vibe. And since Stanley's gruff voice was always more burred and weathered than clear-as-a-bell, it's aged well.

"Basically it's still fun for me so why should I give it up?" he says. "I think in a lot of ways I'm better than I ever was. I think I'm a better writer, I think I'm a better singer, I think I'm a better performer. I've been much better in the last five years since I've been going to a personal trainer. At the end of shows, I'm not destroyed. If you do it this long and you don't learn anything, you're an idiot. I read a quote the other day in reference to Warren Zevon that made me feel good, that people who keep doing it, those are the ones who - and I really hate the word - are artists. It's that desire to keep doing the best thing you've done, and I still have it. Just because it's not as popular doesn't mean it's not better. I'm going at this more with the idea of I'm trying to write the 10 or 12 best things I've ever written and at the same time give people an album that's consistent all the way through."

Without a mass audience to sate and a record label to placate - he releases his music on his own label Line Level - he's free to release albums whenever he's got something ready to go. He says he's halfway through another CD and expects to release it sometime next year.

"I think it's six albums in the last eight years," he says. "I've just felt on a roll basically and at this point, time is finite. I was talking about this with [longtime Stanley keyboard player] Bob [Pelander] recently and said, "I wonder if I'm going to get up one day and go, "I don't want to do this anymore, I don't want to write a song, I don't want to go on stage, I don't want to pick up a guitar.'" It's one of those scary things, like maybe it could happen. The longest I've gone is when MSB broke up, like six months before we did our first "friends' show. I stopped for six months, and I wondered what's going to happen?"

Stanley and his current band, the Resonators (which includes two longtime MSB members, Bob Pelander and drummer Tom Dobeck), play 20 to 25 dates a year, limited by the members' other obligations. And with satellite radio opening up airplay for more different types of music, he's finding that both his old and new stuff is getting heard.

"I get e-mails from people going, "I just heard this on XM, and I haven't heard it for 35 years,'" he says. "It never ceases to amaze me the people that latched onto the band and it really means something to them. I've said this a million times, but I'm lucky enough to have a certain amount of people that still remain interested and more to the point, allow me to do new things, and come along for the ride. It was never all about being a rock star."

These days, Stanley's passion for music overflows to take in members of his band and various other players he's worked with over the years. His Line Level label recently released the debut album, Any Ordinary Man, by Resonators guitarist Marc Lee Shannon; he's planning an all-instrumental release by Pelander. And he says that original MSB guitarist/singer Jonah Koslen, latter-day MSB and current Resonators guitarist Danny Powers, and Resonators backup singer and his occasional duet partner Jennifer Lee all have releases in the planning stages.

"After we're done here I'll pack up some orders, and tomorrow I'll schlepp them to the post office," he says describing his shift to a DIY model more driven by enthusiasm and belief in what he's doing than his long-passed desire for rock stardom. "It's good to be able to do something like Marc's album, a guy that waited 42 years and gave up music 15 year ago. I'm like, "Dude, I didn't do an album that good until my 10th record.' I had to talk Bob into [making an album]. I said, "I'm being selfish; I want to hear your record.' Jonah may have something in the works, Jennifer, Danny. These are not only my friends, but they're very talented people. It's become like a repertory company. It's like a Little Rascals thing: "Let's get a curtain and put on a show.'"